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jdp211 wrote:Do you know if this includes Shimano's fishing products as well? As I understand it, rods and reels make up a significant portion of Shimano's income.

That is total sales. Bicycle components tally a little over 80% of their total sales. The remaining portion comes from fishing, golf and subsidiaries such as Pearl Izumi (which while is a cycling industry company, not considered as part of the 80%)

Another interesting comparison, Sram is said to be about $700 Million in debt (I think it was the Chicago Tribune where I read that, but my source may be wrong.) While Shimano has a cash reserve of over 1 billion dollars. Campag sales and income really haven't varied much with a couple of exceptions, since the mid 90's.

Another interesting comparison, Sram is said to be about $700 Million in debt (I think it was the Chicago Tribune where I read that, but my source may be wrong.) While Shimano has a cash reserve of over 1 billion dollars.

I know this is not a similar comparison at all, but when I read that I also thought of Apple in the 90's. In debt, in the red for seemingly every year and getting worse and worse... and then... The only remote comparison with SRAM and Apple would be that they're both very secretive about their product releases. That's about all I can see. Apple has a better consistency in product release patterns. And besides, tech ≠ bikes.

Thank Mad Cow for posting the article from Bicycling about Campy. I am not a Bicycling reader, but I read it on a long flight over the holiday weekend. One of the more interesting articles I have read in a long time and I learned a lot. It would be worth a read for anyone on here. That article listed total sales of about $150 million for Campy, which ties out to your #.

prendrefeu wrote:I know this is not a similar comparison at all, but when I read that I also thought of Apple in the 90's. In debt, in the red for seemingly every year and getting worse and worse... and then... The only remote comparison with SRAM and Apple would be that they're both very secretive about their product releases. That's about all I can see. Apple has a better consistency in product release patterns. And besides, tech ≠ bikes.

The biggest difference between SRAM and Apple ?

Apple had the clout and charisma that Steve Jobs carried with him, besides the very tightly integrated user experience. SRAM has neither in direct comparison as they do not have an overwhelmingly favoured spokesperson nor a components eco-system which they dictated.

I know this is not a similar comparison at all, but when I read that I also thought of Apple in the 90's. In debt, in the red for seemingly every year and getting worse and worse... and then... The only remote comparison with SRAM and Apple would be that they're both very secretive about their product releases. That's about all I can see. Apple has a better consistency in product release patterns. And besides, tech ≠ bikes.

I'd say Campag is more like Apple. They both have a cult like following with devotees some of whom will buy on cache as a top priority. And when Campag says in the article that they plan on saving Campag by protecting the knowledge, I take that to mean focusing on the image and cache they have developed over the decades.

roca rule wrote:well at least for the road shimano has been around i believe the late seventies 30+ years old sram bought itself into stardom since 2000?even campy has a larger road selection, than sram. some sram stuff is hanging from some of those walmart bikes, but acera is much more frecuent. now shimano has more products under its name like pedals, hubs, etc. that sram does not have. sram somehow has made a dent on shimano's market share in the 105 and up level components. shimano is just to large and old to be taken down in so little time.

Shimano is actually over 80 years old, their first bike parts (freewheels) were made in the 1921. They began derailleurs in the 1950's. So contrary to popular belief Shimano as a Company is actually 12 years older than Campagnolo who formed his company in 1933. Sram will celebrate their 25th anniversary next year. Though in a way they are older than both of the others. Sram started with just grip shifters in the mid 80's. (Started by Stan Day who is still the current president.) But in the mid 90's Sram purchased the Sachs company which was started in the 1890's. So Srams/Sachs heritage could be said to be the longest of all of them.

Shimano and Sram have very different approaches to the game. Shimano has tons of R&D and chooses the slower method to develop most of their own products from start to finish. Sram prefers to buy companies with existing products and improve or fine tune these products in house. I don't know which if either is the better method but it will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next decade or two. It does mean more rapid growth for Sram than Shimano experienced at that age, but rapid growth can sometimes be a failing point. Example Srams growth in sales was 31% from 2009 to 2010.

According to Nbda 70% of all new U.S. bicycle retailers fail in the first 3 years. There is not a significant decrease in the number of retailers due to the number of new shops that continue to open.

Trek which is a privately owned company is estimated to be just short of $1 billion a year in sales.

Giant's yearly sales for 2010 were $1.4 billion USD.

Specialized yearly sales are estimated at about $600 million. As I understand it, Specialized has twice been saved from bankruptcy in the last 15 years. The first time was in 1997 when their creation of the full force line led to a massive drop in sales through their dealers (said to be a 30% drop in sales over a year.). Rumor has it they were saved by the owner of the Supergo chain writing them a very large check. This is said to have been a catalyst for securing Specialized bikes in Supergo and later Performance stores. Then again in 2001 they were brought back from the brink (though nobody seems to know how close they were to the edge.) by selling part of the company to Merida and also by Sinyard putting some of his own cash back into the company. Last year some rumors began to surface about financial trouble yet again for the company with some estimating a drop in 2009 bike sales by as much as 25%, though I personally think this figure is probably not correct.

Global sales for the bicycle industry is projected at $30 Billion for next year. So you can see that even though there are some large players, Shimano, Giant, Trek, etc... there is definitely no dominate force in the industry. Shimano is the biggest and as such is less than 10% of the industry. Though they do wield the largest influence. That's a big part of why some economists believe that the U.S. bicycle industry is perhaps the only current example of perfect competition. It's going to be interesting to see how the middle ground players, everyone from Campag to Sram in scale survive in the bike 2.0 future. (read Rick Vosper for more on bike 2.0)

Madcow, you have posted some really good info. I look back at my beginnings from working in a shop to being inside the OE process and how it all seems vastly different than what it had started out as. While I love the weight weenie (leading edge/ early adopter) mentality and the viewpoints of many people on this board, I don't know how many of them really understand what a small minority this segment this site represents. That being said, it is this segment that helps the industry move forward.

Nice work on getting the actual info out there although you're a little low on the TREK and Spesh numbers.

JV, I totally agree and thought perhaps showing some scale of industry would give a better understanding to people on the board where we all fit in. I remember several years ago, I had a long sit down with Scott Montgomery when he was running Scott bikes. I explained to him that it didn't seem right that they were making the lightest frames, yet at the same time making design choices that made them incompatible with with the lightest parts, by requiring things like 73mm Etype bb, OS posts etc... His response was very honest. They design and build for the general public, the upper end of it, but the general public still. They can't really take into consideration the needs of such a small segment as WW represents. So when a change that lends itself to our WW builds finds it's way into a frame, it's from some other reason. A couple years later I had a meeting with the decision makers at Trek about some upcoming models. I gave them basically the same thoughts, some of their designs, read bb90 and isp were limiting parts choice. No great surprise but the response was the same as it was from Scott.

I know we just have to all accept that even as a group we just don't matter much in the grand scale of the industry. However the upper end, ww segment, cottage builders, custom high end etc... is a place where a main stream manufacturer can gain some "street cred" So while as a market segment we don't matter, we do have value to the manufacturers and because of that won't get ignored.

I think if we looked at Campag's market share that's a pretty good representation of mainstream WW segment. Campags share of the total cycling market is 0.5% I bet that's a pretty fair representation as to the percentage of total market that is represented by WW. (I use the term WW not as members of this board but to represent a type of cyclist.)

madcow wrote:I'd say Campag is more like Apple. They both have a cult like following with devotees some of whom will buy on cache as a top priority. And when Campag says in the article that they plan on saving Campag by protecting the knowledge, I take that to mean focusing on the image and cache they have developed over the decades...

I actually agree. If Campa could hire one "out of the box" thinking innovator and invest bit time and money into updating their line + tie it all with their brand they could be on to something. It will be tough to beat sram without having a mtb line though + but maybe this is their opportunity - to build their first mtb group.

Sram is losing it fast to shimano due to shimano getting better (actually really good) and sram not speeding up their R&D and release cycles. Plus the sram pricing needs solving if they really want to compete with shimano. Sram had the "brand" benefit 2-3 years ago, but I think they are losing that, if not already... watching the RED "no batteries needed" add really makes me wonder what the h*** are they thinking...

indrek wrote:I actually agree. If Campa could hire one "out of the box" thinking innovator and invest bit time and money into updating their line + tie it all with their brand they could be on to something. It will be tough to beat sram without having a mtb line though + but maybe this is their opportunity - to build their first mtb group.

Sram is losing it fast to shimano due to shimano getting better (actually really good) and sram not speeding up their R&D and release cycles. Plus the sram pricing needs solving if they really want to compete with shimano. Sram had the "brand" benefit 2-3 years ago, but I think they are losing that, if not already... watching the RED "no batteries needed" add really makes me wonder what the h*** are they thinking...

Campag actually did dabble into the MTB line some years back, but because their take-up rate was so poor even for the aftermarket ( if you ignore the bike factories ), they closed down that line and exited the market almost as quickly as they entered. Nicely made parts no doubt but not quite near the 'usability' of equivalent priced Shimano groups back then. So probably the reason why, as MTB was still an evolving market, when the people were still pretty sensitive to 'value' rather than 'cache' in the products at that time.

Think the top of the range was called Record OR or something, need to dig that up from the web somewhere again.